Robert Owen New Lanark textile mill
What does Robert Owen have to do with the New Lanark textile mill?
What does Robert Owen have to do with the New Lanark textile mill?
In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became the New Lanark mill's manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his success in the management of cotton mills in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. David Dale and Richard Arkwright had established the substantial mill at New Lanark in 1785. With its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde, the cotton-spinning operation became one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were associations with the mill; 500 of them were children who were brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, who was known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark's residents was unsatisfactory. Over the years, Dale and his son-in-law, Owen, worked to improve the factory workers' lives.  Many of the workers were in the lowest levels of the population; theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were neglected; and most families lived in one room. The respectable country people refused to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills.  Until a series of Truck Acts (1831-1887) required employees to be paid in common currency, many employers operated the truck system that paid workers in total or in part with tokens. The tokens had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop," where the owners could supply shoddy goods and charge top prices. In contrast to other employers, Owen's store offered goods at prices slightly above their wholesale cost. He also passed on the savings from the bulk purchase of goods to his workers, and placed the sale of alcohol under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for the cooperative shops in Britain, which continue in an altered form to trade today. CANNOTANSWER
manager in January 1800.
Robert Owen (; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic communities, and sought a more collective approach to child rearing, including government control of education. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating aged 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his Utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing cooperatives and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools.

Early life and education

Robert Owen was born in Newtown, a small market town in Montgomeryshire, Wales, on 14 May 1771, to Anne (Williams) and Robert Owen. His father was a saddler, ironmonger and local postmaster; his mother was the daughter of a Newtown farming family. Young Robert was the sixth of the family's seven children, two of whom died at a young age. His surviving siblings were William, Anne, John and Richard.

Owen received little formal education, but he was an avid reader. He left school at the age of ten to be apprenticed to a Stamford, Lincolnshire, draper for four years. He also worked in London drapery shops in his teens. At about the age of 18, Owen moved to Manchester, where he spent the next twelve years of his life, employed initially at Satterfield's Drapery in Saint Ann's Square.

While in Manchester, Owen borrowed £100 from his brother William, so as to enter into a partnership to make spinning mules, a new invention for spinning cotton thread, but exchanged his business share within a few months for six spinning mules that he worked in rented factory space. In 1792, when Owen was about 21 years old, mill-owner Peter Drinkwater made him manager of the Piccadilly Mill at Manchester. However, after two years with Drinkwater, Owen voluntarily gave up a contracted promise of partnership, left the company, and went into partnership with other entrepreneurs to establish and later manage the Chorlton Twist Mills in Chorlton-on-Medlock.

By the early 1790s, Owen's entrepreneurial spirit, management skills and progressive moral views were emerging. In 1793, he was elected a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, where the ideas of the Enlightenment were discussed. He also became a committee member of the Manchester Board of Health, instigated principally by Thomas Percival to press for improvements in the health and working conditions of factory workers.

Marriage and family

On a visit to Scotland, Owen met and fell in love with Ann (or Anne) Caroline Dale, daughter of David Dale, a Glasgow philanthropist and the proprietor of the large New Lanark Mills. After their marriage on 30 September 1799, the Owens set up home in New Lanark, but later moved to Braxfield, Scotland.

Robert and Caroline Owen had eight children, the first of whom died in infancy. Their seven survivors were four sons and three daughters: Robert Dale (1801–1877), William (1802–1842), Ann (or Anne) Caroline (1805–1831), Jane Dale (1805–1861), David Dale (1807–1860), Richard Dale (1809–1890) and Mary (1810–1832). Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale and Richard, and his daughter Jane Dale, followed their father to the United States, becoming US citizens and permanent residents in New Harmony, Indiana. Owen's wife Caroline and two of their daughters, Anne Caroline and Mary, remained in Britain, where they died in the 1830s.

New Lanark mill
In July 1799 Owen and his partners bought the New Lanark mill from David Dale, and Owen became its manager in January 1800. Encouraged by his management success in Manchester, Owen hoped to conduct the New Lanark mill on higher principles than purely commercial ones. It had been established in 1785 by David Dale and Richard Arkwright. Its water power provided by the falls of the River Clyde turned its cotton-spinning operation into one of Britain's largest. About 2,000 individuals were involved, 500 of them children brought to the mill at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dale, known for his benevolence, treated the children well, but the general condition of New Lanark residents was unsatisfactory, despite efforts by Dale and his son-in-law Owen to improve their workers' lives.

Many of the workers were from the lowest social levels: theft, drunkenness and other vices were common and education and sanitation neglected. Most families lived in one room. More respected people rejected the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the mills.

Until a series of Truck Acts (1831–1887) required employers to pay their employees in common currency, many operated a truck system, paying workers wholly or in part with tokens that had no monetary value outside the mill owner's "truck shop", which charged high prices for shoddy goods. Unlike others, Owen's truck store offered goods at prices only slightly above their wholesale cost, passing on the savings from bulk purchases to his customers and placing alcohol sales under strict supervision. These principles became the basis for Britain's Co-operative shops, some of which continue trading in altered forms to this day.

Philosophy and influence
Owen tested his social and economic ideas at New Lanark, where he won his workers' confidence and continued to have success through the improved efficiency at the mill. The community also earned an international reputation. Social reformers, statesmen and royalty, including the future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, visited New Lanark to study its methods. The opinions of many such visitors were favourable.

Owen's biggest success was in support of youth education and early child care. As a pioneer in Britain, notably Scotland, Owen provided an alternative to the "normal authoritarian approach to child education". The manners of children brought up under his system were more graceful, genial and unconstrained; health, plenty and contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown and illegitimacy extremely rare. Owen's relations with his workers remained excellent and operations at the mill proceeded in a smooth, regular and commercially successful way.

However, some of Owen's schemes displeased his partners, forcing him to arrange for other investors to buy his share of the business in 1813, for the equivalent of US$800,000. The new investors, who included Jeremy Bentham and the well-known Quaker William Allen, were content to accept a £5,000 return on their capital. The ownership change also provided Owen with a chance to broaden his philanthropy, advocating improvements in workers' rights and child labour laws, and free education for children.

In 1813 Owen authored and published A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the first of four essays he wrote to explain the principles behind his philosophy of socialistic reform. In this he writes: 

Owen had originally been a follower of the classical liberal, utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who believed that free markets, in particular the right of workers to move and choose their employers, would release workers from the excessive power of capitalists. However, Owen developed his own, pro-socialist outlook. In addition, Owen as a deist, criticised organised religion, including the Church of England, and developed a belief system of his own.

Owen felt that human character is formed by conditions over which individuals have no control. Thus individuals could not be praised or blamed for their behaviour or situation in life. This principle led Owen to conclude that the correct formation of people's characters called for placing them under proper environmental influences – physical, moral and social – from their earliest years. These notions of inherent irresponsibility in humans and the effect of early influences on an individual's character formed the basis of Owen's system of education and social reform.

Relying on his own observations, experiences and thoughts, Owen saw his view of human nature as original and "the most basic and necessary constituent in an evolving science of society". His philosophy was influenced by Sir Isaac Newton's views on natural law, and his views resembled those of Plato, Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvétius, William Godwin, John Locke, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, among others. Owen did not have the direct influence of Enlightenment philosophers.

Owen's work at New Lanark continued to have significance in Britain and continental Europe. He was a "pioneer in factory reform, the father of distributive cooperation, and the founder of nursery schools." His schemes for educating his workers included opening an Institute for the Formation of Character at New Lanark in 1818. This and other programmes at New Lanark provided free education from infancy to adulthood. In addition, he zealously supported factory legislation that culminated in the Cotton Mills and Factories Act of 1819. Owen also had interviews and communications with leading members of the British government, including its premier, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool. He also met many of the rulers and leading statesmen of Europe.

Owen adopted new principles to raise the standard of goods his workers produced. A cube with faces painted in different colours was installed above each machinist's workplace. The colour of the face showed to all who saw it the quality and quantity of goods the worker completed. The intention was to encourage workers to do their best. Although it was no great incentive in itself, conditions at New Lanark for workers and their families were idyllic for the time.

Eight-hour day
Owen raised the demand for an eight-hour day in 1810 and set about instituting the policy at New Lanark. By 1817 he had formulated the goal of an eight-hour working day with the slogan "eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest".

Models for socialism (1817)

Owen embraced socialism in 1817, a turning point in his life, in which he pursued a "New View of Society". He outlined his position in a report to the committee of the House of Commons on the country's Poor Laws. As misery and trade stagnation after the Napoleonic Wars drew national attention, the government called on Owen for advice on how to alleviate the industrial concerns. Although he ascribed the immediate misery to the wars, he saw as the underlying cause competition of human labour with machinery, and recommended setting up self-sufficient communities.

Owen proposed that communities of some 1,200 people should settle on land from , all living in one building with a public kitchen and dining halls. (The proposed size may have been influenced by the size of the village of New Lanark.) Owen also proposed that each family have its own private apartments and the responsibility for the care of its children up to the age of three. Thereafter children would be raised by the community, but their parents would have access to them at mealtimes and on other occasions. Owen further suggested that such communities be established by individuals, parishes, counties, or other governmental units. In each case there would be effective supervision by qualified persons. Work and enjoyment of its results should be experienced communally. Owen believed his idea would be the best way to reorganise society in general, and called his vision the "New Moral World".

Owen's utopian model changed little in his lifetime. His developed model envisaged an association of 500–3,000 people as the optimum for a working community. While mainly agricultural, it would possess the best machinery, offer varied employment, and as far as possible be self-contained. Owen went on to explain that as such communities proliferated, "unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circle of tens, hundreds and thousands", linked by common interest.

Arguments against Owen and his answers
Owen always tried to spread his ideas to wider communities. First, he started publishing his ideas in newspapers. Owen then sent such newspapers widely to parliamentarians, politicians and other important people. These articles spurred the first negative reactions to his ideas.

Opponents thought that Owen's plans would result in an uncontrollable increase in population and poverty. The other main criticism was that Owen's plan and the common use of everything would essentially make the country one large workshop. William Hone claimed that Owen saw people as unravelled plants from their roots, and that he wanted to plant them in rectangles. Another commentator accused Owen of wanting to imprison people in workshops like barracks and eradicate their personal independence.

Owen's opponents had begun to regard him as an enemy of religion. His influence in ruling circles, which he had hoped would help him to accomplish his "plan", started diminishing and rumours of his lack of religious conviction spread. Owen believed that without a change in the character of individuals and the environment in which they live, they would remain hostile to those around them. As long as such a social order continued, the positive aspects of Christianity could never be put into practice. Owen also considered it necessary to give people more freedom in order to improve the situation of the poor and working classes. Unless people were better educated, unless they gained more useful information and had permanent employment, they were a danger to the security of the state when given more freedom than the British Constitution did at the time. Without making any changes in the national institutions, he believed that even reorganizing the working classes would bring great benefits. So he opposed the views of radicals seeking to change in the public mentality by expanding voting rights.

Other notable critics of Owen include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who viewed his work as a precursor to their own. They recognized in Owen the important understanding, developed by Marx in Capital, that it is the working class that are responsible for creating the unparalleled wealth in capitalist societies. Similarly, Owen also recognized that under the existing economic system, the working class did not automatically receive the benefits of that newly created wealth. Marx and Engels, differentiated, however, their own scientific conception of socialism from Owen's societies. They argued that Owen's plan, to create a model socialist utopia to coexist with contemporary society and prove its superiority over time, was insufficient to create a new society. In their view, Owen's "socialism" was utopian, since to Owen and the other utopian socialists "[s]ocialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power." Marx and Engels believed that the overthrow of the capitalist system could only occur once the working class was organized into a revolutionary socialist political party of the working class that was completely independent of all capitalist class influence whereas the utopians sought the assistance and the co-operation of the capitalists in order to achieve the transition to socialism.

Community experiments

To test the viability of his ideas for self-sufficient working communities, Owen began experimenting in communal living in America in 1825. Among the most famous efforts was the one set up at New Harmony, Indiana. Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in America before the American Civil War, at least 16 were Owenite or Owenite-influenced. New Harmony was Owen's earliest and most ambitious of these.

Owen and his son William sailed to America in October 1824 to establish an experimental community in Indiana. In January 1825 Owen used a portion of his own funds to purchase an existing town of 180 buildings and several thousand acres of land along the Wabash River in Indiana. George Rapp's Harmony Society, the religious group that owned the property and had founded the communal village of Harmony (or Harmonie) on the site in 1814, decided in 1824 to relocate to Pennsylvania. Owen renamed it New Harmony and made the village his preliminary model for a Utopian community.

Owen sought support for his socialist vision among American thinkers, reformers, intellectuals and public statesmen. On 25 February and 7 March 1825, Owen gave addresses in the U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. Congress and others in the US government, outlining his vision for the Utopian community at New Harmony, and his socialist beliefs. The audience for his ideas included three former U.S. presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) – the outgoing US President James Monroe, and the President-elect, John Quincy Adams. His meetings were perhaps the first discussions of socialism in the Americas; they were certainly a big step towards discussion of it in the United States. Owenism, among the first socialist ideologies active in the United States, can be seen as an instigator of the later socialist movement.

Owen convinced William Maclure, a wealthy Scottish scientist and philanthropist living in Philadelphia to join him at New Harmony and become his financial partner. Maclure's involvement went on to attract scientists, educators and artists such as Thomas Say, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, and Madame Marie Duclos Fretageot. These helped to turn the New Harmony community into a centre for educational reform, scientific research and artistic expression.

Although Owen sought to build a "Village of Unity and Mutual Cooperation" south of the town, his grand plan was never fully realised and he returned to Britain to continue his work. During his long absences from New Harmony, Owen left the experiment under the day-to-day management of his sons, Robert Dale Owen and William Owen, and his business partner, Maclure. However, New Harmony proved to be an economic failure, lasting about two years, although it had attracted over a thousand residents by the end of its first year. The socialistic society was dissolved in 1827, but many of its scientists, educators, artists and other inhabitants, including Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale Owen, and his daughter Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy, remained at New Harmony after the experiment ended.

Other experiments in the United States included communal settlements at Blue Spring, near Bloomington, Indiana, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, and at Forestville Commonwealth at Earlton, New York, as well as other projects in New York, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Nearly all of these had ended before New Harmony was dissolved in April 1827.

Owen's Utopian communities attracted a mix of people, many with the highest aims. They included vagrants, adventurers and other reform-minded enthusiasts. In the words of Owen's son David Dale Owen, they attracted "a heterogeneous collection of Radicals", "enthusiastic devotees to principle," and "honest latitudinarians, and lazy theorists," with "a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in."

Josiah Warren, a participant at New Harmony, asserted that it was doomed to failure for lack of individual sovereignty and personal property. In describing the community, Warren explained: "We had a world in miniature – we had enacted the French revolution over again with despairing hearts instead of corpses as a result.... It appeared that it was nature's own inherent law of diversity that had conquered us... our 'united interests' were directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation...." Warren's observations on the reasons for the community's failure led to the development of American individualist anarchism, of which he was its original theorist. Some historians have traced the demise of New Harmony to serial disagreements among its members.

Social experiments also began in Scotland in 1825, when Abram Combe, an Owenite, attempted a utopian experiment at Orbiston, near Glasgow, but this failed after about two years. In the 1830s, additional experiments in socialistic cooperatives were made in Ireland and Britain, the most important being at Ralahine, established in 1831 in County Clare, Ireland, and at Tytherley, begun in 1839 in Hampshire, England. The former proved a remarkable success for three-and-a-half years until the proprietor, having ruined himself by gambling, had to sell his interest. Tytherley, known as Harmony Hall or Queenwood College, was designed by the architect Joseph Hansom. This also failed. Another social experiment, Manea Colony in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, launched in the late 1830s by William Hodson, likewise an Owenite, but it failed in a couple of years and Hodson emigrated to the United States. The Manea Colony site has been excavated by Cambridge Archaeology Unit (CAU) based at the University of Cambridge.

Return to Britain

Although Owen made further brief visits to the United States, London became his permanent home and the centre of his work in 1828. After extended friction with William Allen and some other business partners, Owen relinquished all connections with New Lanark. He is often quoted in a comment by Allen at the time, "All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer". Having invested most of his fortune in the failed New Harmony communal experiment, Owen was no longer a wealthy capitalist. However, he remained the head of a vigorous propaganda effort to promote industrial equality, free education for children and adequate living conditions in factory towns, while delivering lectures in Europe and publishing a weekly newspaper to gain support for his ideas.

In 1832 Owen opened the National Equitable Labour Exchange system, a time-based currency in which the exchange of goods was effected by means of labour notes; this system superseded the usual means of exchange and middlemen. The London exchange continued until 1833, a Birmingham branch operating for just a few months until July 1833. Owen also became involved in trade unionism, briefly leading the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union (GNCTU) before its collapse in 1834.

Socialism first became current in British terminology in discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, which Owen formed in 1835 and served as its initial leader. Owen's secular views also gained enough influence among the working classes to cause the Westminster Review to comment in 1839 that his principles were the creed of many of them. However, by 1846, the only lasting result of Owen's agitation for social change, carried on through public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, remained the Co-operative movement, and for a time even that seemed to have collapsed.

Role in spiritualism

In 1817, Owen publicly claimed that all religions were false. In 1854, aged 83, Owen converted to spiritualism after a series of sittings with Maria B. Hayden, an American medium credited with introducing spiritualism to England. He made a public profession of his new faith in his publication The Rational Quarterly Review and in a pamphlet titled The future of the Human race; or great glorious and future revolution to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women.

Owen claimed to have had medium contact with spirits of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others. He explained that the purpose of these was to change "the present, false, disunited and miserable state of human existence, for a true, united and happy state... to prepare the world for universal peace, and to infuse into all the spirit of charity, forbearance and love."

Spiritualists claimed after Owen's death that his spirit had dictated to the medium Emma Hardinge Britten in 1871 the "Seven Principles of Spiritualism", used by their National Union as "the basis of its religious philosophy".

Death and legacy
As Owen grew older and more radical in his views, his influence began to decline. Owen published his memoirs, The Life of Robert Owen, in 1857, a year before his death.

Although he had spent most of his life in England and Scotland, Owen returned to his native town of Newtown at the end of his life. He died there on 17 November 1858 and was buried there on 21 November. He died penniless apart from an annual income drawn from a trust established by his sons in 1844.

Owen was a reformer, philanthropist, community builder, and spiritualist who spent his life seeking to improve the lives of others. An advocate of the working class, he improved working conditions for factory workers, which he demonstrated at New Lanark, Scotland, became a leader in trade unionism, promoted social equality through his experimental Utopian communities, and supported the passage of child labour laws and free education for children. In these reforms he was ahead of his time. He envisioned a communal society that others could consider and apply as they wished. In Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race (1849), he went on to say that character is formed by a combination of Nature or God and the circumstances of the individual's experience. Citing beneficial results at New Lanark, Scotland, during 30 years of work there, Owen concluded that a person's "character is not made by, but for the individual," and that nature and society are responsible for each person's character and conduct.

Owen's agitation for social change, along with the work of the Owenites and of his own children, helped to bring lasting social reforms in women's and workers' rights, establish free public libraries and museums, child care and public, co-educational schools, and pre-Marxian communism, and develop the Co-operative and trade union movements. New Harmony, Indiana, and New Lanark, Scotland, two towns with which he is closely associated, remain as reminders of his efforts.

Owen's legacy of public service continued with his four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard Dale, and his daughter, Jane, who followed him to America to live at New Harmony, Indiana:
Robert Dale Owen (1801–1877), an able exponent of his father's doctrines, managed the New Harmony community after his father returned to Britain in 1825. He wrote articles and co-edited with Frances Wright the New-Harmony Gazette in the late 1820s in Indiana and the Free Enquirer in the 1830s in New York City. Owen returned to New Harmony in 1833 and became active in Indiana politics. He was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives (1836–1839 and 1851–1853) and U.S. House of Representatives (1843–1847), and was appointed chargé d'affaires in Naples in 1853–1858. While serving as a member of Congress, he drafted and helped to secure passage of a bill founding the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. He was elected a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850, and argued in support of widows and married women's property and divorce rights. He also favoured legislation for Indiana's tax-supported public school system. Like his father, he believed in spiritualism, authoring two books on the subject: Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859) and The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1872).
William Owen (1802–1842) moved to the United States with his father in 1824. His business skill, notably his knowledge of cotton-goods manufacturing, allowed him to remain at New Harmony after his father returned to Scotland, and serve as adviser to the community. He organised New Harmony's Thespian Society in 1827, but died of unknown causes at the age of 40.
Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy (1805–1861) arrived in the United States in 1833 and settled in New Harmony. She was a musician and educator who set up a school in her home. In 1835 she married Robert Henry Fauntleroy, a civil engineer from Virginia living at New Harmony.
David Dale Owen (1807–1860) moved to the United States in 1827 and resided at New Harmony for several years. He trained as a geologist and natural scientist and earned a medical degree. He was appointed a United States geologist in 1839. His work included geological surveys in the Midwest, more specifically the states of Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas, as well as Minnesota Territory. His brother Richard succeeded him as state geologist of Indiana.
Richard Dale Owen (1810–1890) emigrated to the United States in 1827 and joined his siblings at New Harmony. He fought in the Mexican–American War in 1847, taught natural science at Western Military Institute in Tennessee in 1849–1859, and earned a medical degree in 1858. During the American Civil War he was a colonel in the Union army and served as a commandant of Camp Morton, a prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate soldiers at Indianapolis, Indiana. After the war, Owen served as Indiana's second state geologist. In addition, he was a professor at Indiana University and chaired its natural science department in 1864–1879. He helped plan Purdue University and was appointed its first president in 1872–1874, but resigned before its classes began and resumed teaching at Indiana University. He spent his retirement years on research and writing.

Honours and tributes

The Co-operative Movement erected a monument to Robert Owen in 1902 at his burial site in Newtown, Montgomeryshire.
The Welsh people donated a bust of Owen by Welsh sculptor Sir William Goscombe John to the International Labour Office library in Geneva, Switzerland.

Selected published works
A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice (London, 1813). Retitled, A New View of Society: Or, Essays on the Formation of Human Character Preparatory to the Development of a Plan for Gradually Ameliorating the Condition of Mankind, for second edition, 1816
Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System. London, 1815
Report to the Committee of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor (1817)
Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 181
An Address to the Master Manufacturers of Great Britain: On the Present Existing Evils in the Manufacturing System (Bolton, 1819)
Report to the County of Lanark of a Plan for relieving Public Distress (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1821)
An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilised parts of the world (London and Paris, 1823)
An Address to All Classes in the State. London, 1832
The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. London, 1849

Collected works:
A New View of Society and Other Writings, introduction by G. D. H. Cole. London and New York: J. M. Dent & Sons, E. P. Dutton and Co., 1927
A New View of Society and Other Writings, G. Claeys, ed. London and New York: Penguin Books, 1991
The Selected Works of Robert Owen, G. Claeys, ed., 4 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1993

Archival collections:
Robert Owen Collection, National Co-operative Archive, United Kingdom.
New Harmony, Indiana, Collection, 1814–1884, 1920, 1964, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
New Harmony Series III Collection, Workingmen's Institute, New Harmony, Indiana, United States
Owen family collection, 1826–1967, bulk 1830–1890, Indiana University Archives, Bloomington, Indiana, United States

See also
Cincinnati Time Store
José María Arizmendiarrieta
Labour voucher
List of Owenite communities in the United States
Owenstown
Owenism
William King

References

Bibliography

 (online version)

Further reading

Biographies of Owen
A. J. Booth, Robert Owen, the Founder of Socialism in England (London, 1869)
G. D. H. Cole, Life of Robert Owen. London, Ernest Benn Ltd., 1925; second edition Macmillan, 1930
Lloyd Jones. The Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen. London, 1889
A. L. Morton, The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen. New York, International Publishers, 1969
W. H. Oliver, "Robert Owen and the English Working-Class Movements", History Today (November 1958) 8–11, pp. 787–796
F. A. Packard, Life of Robert Owen. Philadelphia: Ashmead & Evans, 1866
Frank Podmore, Robert Owen: A Biography. London: Hutchinson and Company, 1906
David Santilli, Life of the Mill Man. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1987
William Lucas Sargant, Robert Owen and his social philosophy . London, 1860
Richard Tames, Radicals, Railways & Reform. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1986

Other works about Owen
Arthur Bestor, Backwoods Utopias. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950, 2nd edition, 1970
John Butt (ed). Robert Owen: Aspects of his Life and Work. Humanities Press, 1971

Gregory Claeys, Citizens and Saints. Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism. Cambridge University Press, 1989
Gregory Claeys, Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism 1815–1860. Princeton University Press, 1987
R. E. Davies, The Life of Robert Owen, Philanthropist and Social Reformer, An Appreciation. Robert Sutton, 1907
R. E. Davis and F. J. O'Hagan, Robert Owen. London: Continuum Press, 2010
E. Dolleans, Robert Owen. Paris, 1905
I. Donnachie, Robert Owen. Owen of New Lanark and New Harmony. 2000
Auguste Marie Fabre, Un Socialiste Pratique, Robert Owen. Nìmes, Bureaux de l'Émancipation, 1896
John F. C. Harrison, Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America: Quest for the New Moral World. New York, 1969
Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts (University of California Press, 1982). (One chapter is devoted to Owen.)
G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates V. 1. London, 1906
G. J. Holyoake, The History of Co-operation in England: Its Literature and Its Advocates  V. 2. London, 1906
The National Library of Wales, A Bibliography of Robert Owen, The Socialist. 1914

H. Simon, Robert Owen: Sein Leben und Seine Bedeutung für die Gegenwart. Jena, 1905
O. Siméon, Robert Owen's Experiment at New Lanark. From Paternalism to Socialism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

External links

Essays by Owen at the Marxists Internet Archive
Brief biography at the New Lanark World Heritage Site 
The Robert Owen Museum, Newtown, Wales
Video of Owen's wool mill
Brief biography at Cotton Times 
"Robert Owen (1771-1858) social reformer, founder of New Harmony", University of Evansville, Indiana
"Robert Owen and the Co-operative movement"
Brief biography at The History Guide
Brief biography at age-of-the-sage.org
Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism at PBS {dead link 2021-02-22}

1771 births
1858 deaths
Cooperative organizers
Founders of utopian communities
People from Newtown, Powys
Owenites
Utopian socialists
Welsh agnostics
Welsh humanists
19th-century Welsh businesspeople
18th-century Welsh businesspeople
Welsh business theorists
Welsh philanthropists
Welsh socialists
British reformers
British social reformers
Socialist economists
New Lanark is a village on the River Clyde, approximately 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometres) from Lanark, in Lanarkshire, and some  southeast of Glasgow, Scotland.  It was founded in 1786 by David Dale, who built cotton mills and housing for the mill workers.  Dale built the mills there in a brief partnership with the English inventor and entrepreneur Richard Arkwright to take advantage of the water power provided by the only waterfalls on the River Clyde. Under the ownership of a partnership that included Dale's son-in-law, Robert Owen, a Welsh utopian socialist and philanthropist, New Lanark became a successful business and an early example of a planned settlement and so an important milestone in the historical development of urban planning.

The New Lanark mills operated until 1968. After a period of decline, the New Lanark Conservation Trust (NLCT) was founded in 1974 (now known as the New Lanark Trust (NLT)) to prevent demolition of the village.  By 2006 most of the buildings have been restored and the village has become a major tourist attraction. It is one of six UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Scotland and an Anchor Point of ERIH – the European Route of Industrial Heritage.

History 
The New Lanark cotton mills were founded in 1786 by David Dale in a brief partnership with Richard Arkwright. Dale was one of the self-made "Burgher Gentry" of Glasgow who, like most of this gentry, had a summer retreat, an estate at Rosebank, Cambuslang, not far from the Falls of Clyde, which have been painted by J. M. W. Turner and many other artists. The mills used the recently developed water-powered cotton spinning machinery invented by Richard Arkwright. Dale sold the mills, lands and village in the early 19th century for £60,000, payable over 20 years, to a partnership that included his son-in-law Robert Owen. Owen, who became mill manager in 1800, was an industrialist who carried on his father-in-law's philanthropic approach to industrial working and who subsequently became an influential social reformer. New Lanark, with its social and welfare programmes, epitomised his Utopian socialism (see also Owenism). The town and mills are important historically through their connection with Owen's ideas, but also because of their role in the developing industrial revolution in the UK and their place in the history of urban planning.

The New Lanark mills depended upon water power. A dam was constructed on the Clyde above New Lanark and water was drawn off the river to power the mill machinery. The water first travelled through a tunnel, then through an open channel called the lade. It then went to a number of water wheels in each mill building. It was not until 1929 that the last waterwheel was replaced by a water turbine. Water power is still used in New Lanark. A new water turbine has been installed in Mill Number Three to provide electricity for the tourist areas of the village.

In Owen's time some 2,500 people lived at New Lanark, many from the poorhouses of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Although not the grimmest of mills by far, Owen found the conditions unsatisfactory and resolved to improve the workers' lot. He paid particular attention to the needs of the 500 or so children living in the village (one of the tenement blocks is named Nursery Buildings) and working at the mills, and opened the first infants' school in Britain in 1817, although the previous year he had completed the Institute for the Formation of Character.

The mills thrived commercially, but Owen's partners were unhappy at the extra expense incurred by his welfare programmes. Unwilling to allow the mills to revert to the old ways of operating, Owen bought out his partners. In 1813 the Board forced an auction, hoping to obtain the town and mills at a low price but Owen and a new board (including the economist Jeremy Bentham) that was sympathetic to his reforming ideas won out.

New Lanark became celebrated throughout Europe, with many statesmen, reformers and royalty visiting the mills. They were astonished to find a clean, healthy industrial environment with a content, vibrant workforce and a prosperous, viable business venture all rolled into one. Owen's philosophy was contrary to contemporary thinking, but he was able to demonstrate that it was not necessary for an industrial enterprise to treat its workers badly to be profitable. Owen was able to show visitors the village's excellent housing and amenities, and the accounts showing the profitability of the mills.

As well as the mills' connections with reform, socialism and welfare, they are also representative of the Industrial Revolution that occurred in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries and which fundamentally altered the shape of the world. The planning of employment in the mills alongside housing for the workers and services such as a school also makes the settlement iconic in the development of urban planning in the UK.

In 1825, control of New Lanark passed to the Walker family when Owen left Britain to start settlement of New Harmony in the US. The Walkers managed the village until 1881, when it was sold to Birkmyre and Sommerville and the Gourock Ropeworks (although they tried unsuccessfully to sell the mills and the town in 1851). They and their successor companies remained in control until the mills closed in 1968.

The town and the industrial activity had been in decline before then, but after the mills closed migration away from the village accelerated, and the buildings began to deteriorate. The top two floors of Mill Number 1 were removed in 1945 but the building has since been restored and is now the New Lanark Mill Hotel. In 1963 the New Lanark Association (NLA) was formed as a housing association and commenced the restoration of Caithness Row and Nursery Buildings. In 1970 the mills, other industrial buildings and the houses used by Dale and Owen were sold to Metal Extractions Limited, a scrap metal company. In 1974 the NLCT (now the NLT) was founded to prevent demolition of the village. A compulsory purchase order was used in 1983 to recover the mills and other buildings from Metal Extractions after a repairs notice had been served in 1979. This was because of the state of repair of the buildings despite their listing as historic buildings that required their legal preservation in 1971. They are now controlled by the NLT, either directly through the Trust or through wholly owned companies (New Lanark Trading Ltd, New Lanark Hotel Ltd and New Lanark Homes). By 2005 most of the buildings had been restored and the village has become a major tourist attraction.

Living conditions 

In the mid 19th century, an entire family would have been housed in a single room. Some sense of such living conditions can be obtained by visiting the reconstructed Millworkers House at New Lanark World Heritage Site or the David Livingstone Centre at Blantyre.

David Dale, who founded New Lanark, was also involved in the mills at Blantyre. Only one tenement row has survived in Blantyre, and that building is now a museum. This is mostly devoted to David Livingstone, who was born there in 1813, both examples include re-creations of the single-room living conditions of the time at New Lanark, featuring trundle beds for children such as Livingstone would have used. The David Livingstone Centre is 18 miles by road from New Lanark, between Glasgow and Hamilton.

The living conditions in the village gradually improved, and by the early 20th century families would have had the use of several rooms. It was not until 1933 that the houses had interior cold water taps for sinks and the communal outside toilets were replaced by inside facilities.

From 1938 the village proprietors provided free electricity to all the homes in New Lanark, but only enough power was available for one dim bulb in each room. The power was switched off at 10 pm Sunday-Friday, 11 pm Saturday. In 1955 New Lanark was connected to the National Grid.

New Lanark today 
It has been estimated that over 400,000 people visit the village each year. The importance of New Lanark has been recognised by UNESCO as one of Scotland's six World Heritage Sites, the others being Edinburgh Old and New Towns, Heart of Neolithic Orkney, St Kilda, the Antonine Wall and the Forth Bridge. The mills and town were listed in 2001 after an unsuccessful application for World Heritage listing in 1986.

About 130 people live in New Lanark. Of the residential buildings, only Mantilla Row has not been restored. Some of the restoration work was undertaken by the NLA and the NLCT. Braxfield Row and most of Long Row were restored by private individuals who bought the houses as derelict shells and restored them as private houses. Seven houses in Double Row have been externally restored by the NLCT and are being sold for private ownership. In addition to the 21 owner-occupied properties in the village there are 45 rented properties which were let by the NLA, which was a registered housing association. The NLA also owned other buildings in the village. In 2009 the NLA was wound up as being financially and administratively unviable, and responsibility for the village's tenanted properties passed to the NLCT.

In 2009 Clydesdale Bank released a new series of Scottish banknotes, of which the 20-pound note features New Lanark on its reverse.

Considerable attention has been given to maintaining the historical authenticity of the village. No television aerials or satellite dishes are allowed in the village, and services such as telephone, television and electricity are delivered though buried cables. To provide a consistent appearance all external woodwork is painted white, and doors and windows follow a consistent design. Householders used to be banned from owning dogs, but this rule is no longer enforced.

Some features introduced by the NLT, such as commercial signage and a glass bridge connecting the Engine House and Mill Number Three, have been criticised. The retention of a 1924-pattern red telephone box in the village square has also been seen as inappropriate.

The mills, the hotel and most of the non-residential buildings in the village are owned and operated by the NLT through wholly owned companies.

Historic maps
A 1911 Ordnance Survey map is available from the National Library of Scotland is available  and

Buildings 

Braxfield Row, built c1790 – a tenement block converted to ten owner-occupied houses, nine are four-storey and one five-storey.
Long Row, built c1790 – a tenement block converted to 14 three-storey houses. Ten are owner occupied and four are tenanted.
Double Row, built c1795 – a tenement block of seven four-storey houses and one five-storey that were occupied from the 1790s to the 1970s. They originally contained back-to-back apartments. The side facing the river was also known as Water Row. Seven of the houses have been externally renovated to be sold as single occupancy homes. Number seven is known as the 'Museum Stair' and is designated a Scheduled Monument, due to the remarkable survival of original artefacts and materials such as fireplaces, sinks, 'set-in' beds, remnants of wallpaper and linoleum.
Mantilla Row, built c1795 – a tenement block demolished when it became structurally unsafe. New foundations and some walls have been laid, but the row has not been completely rebuilt.
Wee Row, built c1795 – a tenement block converted to a youth hostel in 1994. It was once operated by the Scottish Youth Hostels Association but is now managed by the New Lanark Mill Hotel.
New Buildings, built 1798 – a four-storey building containing the bell tower. The bell, which once summoned the workers to the mills, is now sounded at midnight on the last day of the year. The building contains a museum and tenanted flats.
Nursery Buildings, built 1809 – a three-storey building that has been converted to tenanted flats. It was once used to house the orphan children who worked in the mills.
Caithness Row, built 1792 – a three-storey tenement block that has been converted to tenanted flats. Caithness is a district in the Scottish Highlands and the row was supposedly named after a group of Highlanders recruited to work in the mills.
Village Church, built 1898 – now used for social purposes and named the Community Hall. Has since fallen into disrepair and has become structurally unsafe.
Mill Number One, built 1789 – originally built in 1785 and started spinning in March 1786. It burnt down on 9 October 1788 and was rebuilt in 1789. In 1802 the mill had three waterwheels driving 6556 spindles. In 1811 558 people, 408 of them female, worked in the mill. In 1945 it had its top two floors removed. The building became derelict and was renovated and rebuilt as the New Lanark Mill Hotel. The hotel opened in 1998.
Waterhouses, built c1799-1818 – a row of one- and two-storey buildings next to Mill Number One, converted into holiday flats.
Mill Number Two, built 1788 – in 1811 it had three waterwheels and employed 486 people, 283 of them women. It was widened in 1884–5 to accommodate ring frames. The extension is the only brick faced building in the village.  It is now used for tourist purposes.
Mill Number Three, built 1790–92 – known as 'the jeanies house' and contained a large number of water powered jennies. It burned down in 1819 and was rebuilt circa 1826–33. In 1811 it employed 398 people, 286 of them women. It is now used for tourist purposes. It also contains a water turbine that generates electricity for parts of the village.
Mill Number Four, built circa 1791-3 – initially used as a storeroom and workshop. It also housed '275 children who have no parents' (Donnachie and G. Hewitt). It was destroyed by fire in 1883 and has not been rebuilt. In 1990 a waterwheel was brought from Hole Mill Farm, Fife, and installed on the site of the mill.
Institute for the Formation of Character, built 1816 – a four-storey building that is now used for tourism and business purposes.
Engine House, built 1881 – attached to the Institute for the Formation of Character and contains a restored steam engine.
School, built 1817 – a three-storey building that is now a museum. It housed the first school for working-class children in Scotland.
Mechanics Workshop, built 1809 – a three-storey building that once housed the craftsmen who built and maintained the mill machinery.
Dyeworks, built ? – originally a brass and iron foundry with its own waterwheel. It now contains shops and a visitor centre.
Gasworks with octagonal chimney, built by 1851 – used as a store.
Owens House, built 1790 – used as a museum.
Dales House, built 1790 – used as business premises.
Mill Lade – dug to carry water from the River Clyde to power the mill machinery.
Graveyard – on the hill above New Lanark, between the village and the visitors' car park. Many of the first villagers are buried there.
1 & 2 New Lanark Road (locally known as the twin houses) – two opposing two-storey gatehouses some distance from the village. These marked the entrance to New Lanark. They are now in private ownership.

Visiting New Lanark 

There is a large free car park on the outskirts of the village. Only disabled visitors may park in the village.  The walk from the car park down to the mill village provides a worthwhile panoramic view.  There is a bus service [Number 135] from Lanark station bus stance. The railway station has half-hourly services from Glasgow. New Lanark is just over one mile from the Lanark rail and bus stations. The walk is mainly downhill and well signposted.

The village has a four-star hotel [the New Lanark Mill Hotel], holiday flats [the Waterhouses], and Wee Row which provides hostel type accommodation. There are restaurants and shops in the village, and a visitors' centre. All are owned and operated by the New Lanark Conservation Trust.

The Clyde walkway long-distance footpath passes through the village and the Scottish Wildlife Trust's visitor centre for the Falls of Clyde Nature reserve is based in a group of mill buildings.

See also 
Banknotes of Scotland (featured on design)
Saltaire
Crespi d'Adda
Bonnington pavilion, Falls of Clyde
Catrine
Stanley, Perthshire
Owenstown
Company Town

References

General
Historic New Lanark, I. Donnachie and G. Hewitt. Edinburgh University Press, 1993. .
Historical Tours in the Clyde Valley. Published by the Clyde Valley Tourist Association and the Lanark & District Archaeological Association. Printed by Robert MacLehose and Company Limited, Renfrew, Scotland. 1982.
  David Dale: A Life.  Stenlake Publishing Ltd. D.J. MacLaren, 2015
David Dale, Robert Owen and the story of New Lanark. Moubray House Press, Edinburgh, Scotland. 1986. .
New Lanark World Heritage Site Management Plan 2003–2008.
City Fathers: The early history of town planning in Britain, C. Bell and R. Bell, Penguin, Harmondsworth
Robert Owen's Experiment at New Lanark. From Paternalism to Socialism, O. Siméon. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

External links 

New Lanark World Heritage site – official site
Photographs of New Lanark
New Lanark residents association.

Model villages
Populated places established in 1786
World Heritage Sites in Scotland
Planned communities in Scotland
New Lanark
European Route of Industrial Heritage Anchor Points
Museums in South Lanarkshire
Open-air museums in Scotland
Industry museums in Scotland
Textile museums in the United Kingdom
Villages in South Lanarkshire
Category A listed buildings in South Lanarkshire
Co-operatives in Scotland
1786 establishments in Scotland David Dale (6 January 1739–7 March 1806) was a leading Scottish industrialist, merchant and philanthropist during the Scottish Enlightenment period at the end of the 18th century. He was a successful entrepreneur in a number of areas, most notably in the cotton-spinning industry, and was the founder of the cotton mills in New Lanark, where he provided social and educational conditions far in advance of anything available anywhere else in the UK. New Lanark attracted visitors from all over the world. Robert Owen, who married Dale’s daughter, Caroline, in 1799, used New Lanark to develop his theories about communitarian living, education and character formation. Scottish historian, Tom Devine, described Dale as ‘the greatest cotton magnate of his time in Scotland’.

Early career
Dale was born in Stewarton, Ayrshire on 6 January 1739, son of William Dale (1708–1796), a general dealer in the village, and Martha Dunlop (1719–1796). His date of birth is normally given as 6 January but there is no officially recorded date of birth. However, parish records show that he was baptised on 14 January 1739. As a child, he worked with the cattle as a ‘herd laddie’ in very basic conditions. This was the period of runrigs and impoverished tenant farmers. Dale’s family was not wealthy, but he did not experience the absolute poverty and near starvation of many of those involved in tenant farming.

His father apprenticed him to a handloom weaver in Paisley & then he became an agent in Hamilton and, later, Cambuslang  – putting out yarn to be woven and collecting the finished cloth. He arrived in Glasgow c1763 as a clerk to a silk merchant and began his own small business in the High Street, importing linen yarns from France and the Netherlands.

The business grew rapidly and Dale became a wealthy merchant in the city. In 1777, at the age of 38, he married 24 year old Anne Caroline (Carolina) Campbell, whose late father had been the Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland. In 1783  Dale had his own mansion built in Glasgow’s fashionable Charlotte Street. The couple were together for 14 years until the death of Carolina. During that period, she bore him nine children, four of whom, including their only son, died in infancy.

Pivotal years
The period 1783-1785 saw Dale’s career take off in a number of directions.  By 1785 he was no longer a city merchant but a budding entrepreneur, banker and industrialist.

In 1783 he joined Edinburgh businessman Robert Scott Moncrieff in setting up the first Glasgow agency of the Royal Bank of Scotland – a business arrangement possibly assisted by his wife’s family connections. Within a few years, the Glasgow branch was doing business worth one million pounds. America was no longer a British colony and Glasgow merchants no longer depended on tobacco for their fortunes. Textiles, sugar and rum were the new tobacco. In 1783, there was an opportunity for Dale to extend his reputation and influence with the establishment of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, the first of its type in Britain. Dale became a director, later deputy chairman, and joined forces with the likes of James Oswald, James  Dennistoun, John Glassford, Thomas Buchanan and many others – ex tobacco lords, sugar & rum merchants, textile merchants and entrepreneurs from the coal, chemical and brewing industries. Dale became an important figure in the commercial life of Glasgow and remained an influential figure in Chamber until his death.

According to one source, Dale by this time had become:...the prosperous Glasgow merchant who, by virtue of pure force of character and intelligence, had fairly broken down that wall of distinction which once separated him from the great tobacco and sugar lords and could now wear his cocked hat jauntily, display his silver knee buckles showily and take the place of honour on the crown of the causeway with the proudest of them all.

New Lanark
In 1784 Richard Arkwright visited Scotland in 1784 at the request of  George Dempster, landowner and Perthshire M.P. Arkwright, owner of the several successful cotton mills in England, acknowledged as the father of the cotton industry and one of the richest men in Britain, was persuaded to visit Lanark, with a view to establishing a cotton mill in the area.

Dale and Dempster accompanied Arkwright to where New Lanark is today. The site was considered to be suitable and a partnership was agreed between the three of them. Construction work began immediately and the mill buildings were based on Arkwright’s own mills in Cromford. Men and boys were sent from New Lanark to Cromford for initial training and the mills began spinning in early 1786, at which point both Dempster and Arkwright left the partnership, leaving Dale as the sole owner. By the 1790s there were nearly 1,400 people living and working in the community.
Business boomed and the village attracted thousands of visitors from all over the world. These included William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge and Robert Owen. They were attracted by a very successful spinning business, but New Lanark also became known as a model factory community where business, philanthropy and education all came together for the first time anywhere in Britain. The community became as famous for its social & educational provision as it did for anything else – something which Owen was later to capitalise upon.

The apprentice children

Much of the focus was on Dale’s treatment of his child employees – the so-called apprentice or pauper children. It was common practice for large numbers of children to be employed in mills and elsewhere from the age of 6 or 7 to age 15 or thereabouts. In New Lanark, village children worked alongside some 300 apprentice or pauper children from the charity workhouses in Glasgow and Edinburgh. They were often orphans, looked after by the parish, which was very keen to reduce costs by sending them out to work. The children were not paid but were given board & lodging in No.4 Mill. To begin with, they worked as reelers and pickers but later they worked at a range of jobs where they could learn skills which they could use when they left the mills. Some joined the army and navy; some became joiners or smiths and some were kept on in New Lanark. Employers like Dale were seen as charitable and benevolent because they offered the chance of employment, board and lodging and the acquisition of transferable skills.

The children worked from 6am until 7pm, with breaks for breakfast and dinner. They were given two sets of work clothes which were laundered regularly and a blue dress uniform for Sundays. Sleeping quarters were regularly cleaned and there is evidence to show that many of the pauper children enjoyed better conditions than some of the local children. Public Health campaigner, Dr James Currie was one of the many visitors. He noted that:The utmost cleanliness, health and order pervaded the whole manufactory. The children looked cheerful and happy with rosy cheeks and chubby countenances, and I found a variety of excellent regulations established for health, morals and knowledge.

Much like Owen later on, Dale was convinced that a good education was essential for all involved. This was a new development in the evolution of factory communities. In England, owners like Arkwright offered Sunday schools but in New Lanark, there was a day school (every day) for under-sixes and an evening school (7-9pm) for older children. There was a formal curriculum which comprised the 3Rs, sewing, church music and religious study. At one stage, the school roll totalled more than 500 pupils and Dale was employing 16 trained teachers to teach more than eight classes. The pupils were grouped according to their ability and promoted to the next class after suitable tests. Teachers received a bonus for each pupil promoted.

All available evidence indicates that he provided conditions far superior to anything available in Britain at the time. Dale summed up his view of the practical effects of employing the children:…when it is considered that the greater part of the children who are in the boarding house consists of destitute orphans, children abandoned by their parents... and many who know not who were their parents... it gives me great pleasure to say, that by proper management and attention, much good instead of evil may be done at cotton mills. For I am warranted in affirming that many now have stout, healthy bodies and are of decent behaviour who in all probability would have been languishing with disease and pests to society had they not been employed at Lanark cotton mills.Owen visited New Lanark on a number of occasions and in 1799 he married Dale’s daughter, Caroline. He and his partners bought New Lanark and Owen took over as sole manager on 1 January 1800. Over the next two decades Owen became famous for the improvements he made to the social conditions of his workforce, some of which were built on practices established by Dale. Several historians have commented that Owen exaggerated the problems that he found at New Lanark, downplaying Dale's innovations in order to boost the importance of his own, and have, to varying degrees, acknowledged the achievements of both men.

Other business interests

Dale’s business interests continued to expand. He had a house in New Lanark but the day to day management was left to William Kelly, a skilled engineer and manager. The main offices of the business were in St Andrew’s Square, Glasgow and Dale continued to live in Charlotte Street in the city. Later in life he added a country house, Rosebank, in Cambuslang, to his properties. He divided his time between New Lanark, the Royal Bank and the offices in St Andrews Square.

He was involved in a number of other cotton mills. Not long after spinning began in New Lanark, Dale built a new mill in Blantyre and a school for the apprentices. He sold the venture to James Monteith in 1792.  In 1788, Dale went into partnership with Claud Alexander of Ballochmyle (former Paymaster for the East India Company) in a spinning mill in Catrine in Ayrshire. Dale was heavily involved in the design of these mills and within a few years, some 1,300 people were employed. Once again there were apprentice (but no pauper) children and a proper school was provided. He remained involved with the business until 1801 when the mills were sold to James Finlay. In partnership with a number of others, he opened a small mill in Spinningdale in Sutherland. This was more a charitable effort than anything else. The aim was to provide work and relieve famine, distress in the area and also to stem the tide of emigration from the Highlands. Dale remained involved long after all the others had left and continued to finance it until two years before his death. The mill burned down a year later.

In Glasgow, Dale’s business profile continued to grow. In Dalmarnock he set up a dyeworks where cloth was dyed with a new, colourfast dye called ‘Turkey Red’ (sometimes known in the city as 'Dale’s Red’).  In the centre of town, in what is now Ingram Street, he built a warehouse and small manufactory which produced linen strips or tapes known as ‘incles’ or Scotch Tape. The company traded under the name Dale, Campbell, Reid & Dale, the second Dale being his nephew, David Dale Junior. Still in Glasgow, Dale invested in the insurance business. He became a director of the Glasgow Fire Insurance Company, which sold life insurance and annuities and had offices in George Street and Wilson Street. Dale also owned a significant amount of property in and around the city,  including lands and tenements in the Ramshorn (Ingram Street) area, Shuttle Street, Barrowfield,  Ruchill and Parkhead.

Philanthropy and civic duty

Dale was also a director or manager of various charitable projects throughout the city, and   newspaper reports of the time talk of his charity, his kindness, his benevolence and his good deeds and public works. Much of this was inspired by his religious belief. He was a strongly evangelical Christian, a pastor in the Dissenting (Secessionist) Church, preaching on Sundays in meeting houses all over the city. He stated in one of his sermons:Riches are one great object. These frequently take to themselves wings and flyaway... they profit not in the day of wrath.  And if these are obtained by oppressing the poor, or withholding from the needy what his wants demand from us, the consequence is awful... your riches are corrupted.He donated to small charitable ventures on a regular basis. These included the Howard Fund for prison reform, an injured servicemen’s charity, the Royal Northern Infirmary in Inverness, Perth Academy and the newly-formed Glasgow Humane Society, where he agreed to become a director and undertake fundraising on their behalf.

He was better known for some of his more public philanthropy and civic duties. He served as a Bailie and Magistrate in the city for two years, something which he found particularly time-consuming and onerous. Nevertheless, he earned a reputation in the press for his relatively lenient approach and became known as ‘The Benevolent Magistrate’. When a new road was required between Clydesdale and England, he gave £700 towards the cost. On several occasions he helped to feed those in need. For example, he provided meal to the poor in Stewarton at below cost price and he sent a ship to the U.S. to bring back grain which he distributed to the poor in Glasgow.  

For twenty years he was a director of the Town’s Hospital, the equivalent of a charity workhouse for the poor, orphans, elderly, sick and, until 1814, the mentally ill, serving on the institution’s Manufacturing Committee.

 Dale was also involved with Glasgow Royal Infirmary. The Infirmary was intended ‘...for the reception of indigent persons under bodily distress in the west of Scotland’. Dale was involved in this project from its very beginning in 1788. He chaired the group which raised the funds, found the land and supervised the building work of this major city institution. He subscribed £200 and when the building finally opened in 1795, he was appointed as a manager, spending the rest of his life as a manager or director. He stood to gain nothing personally from this commitment. The Infirmary was for the poor. However, as a manager and annual subscriber, he had the right to refer a number of his workers from New Lanark and between 1795 and 1803 he personally referred some 64 patients.

Dale, slavery and the abolition movement 
The raw cotton which Dale, in common with all British mill owners, used for spinning in his mills came from three principal sources, the United States, South America and the West Indies, all places where slave labour was the norm. Cotton was traded in the U.K’s major cities, including Glasgow. Anyone who worked in the cotton industry, therefore, depended on the slave trade either directly or indirectly.    
However, by the late 18th century, attitudes to slavery were beginning to change and the abolition movement was growing. Nationally, the abolitionists were led by Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce in London and the London Society sent representatives across the country seeking support for anti-slavery petitions. The Glasgow Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was set up in January 1791, with Dale in the chair. In the same year, he bought shares in the newly-formed Sierra Leone Company which sought to establish a colony of freed slaves.

The Glasgow group publicised the London Society’s pamphlet, with a Preface about the new Glasgow Society. There were various meetings throughout 1791, all chaired by Dale, and the Society sent 100 guineas to the London campaign offices. The following year, it met on a number of occasions in support of the various public petitions which were being drawn up in all the cities and towns in Scotland.

At a General Meeting of the Glasgow Society on 1 February 1792, with Dale in the Chair, the members resolved;…that the traffic in the human species is founded on the grossest injustice, is attended with the utmost cruelty and barbarity to an innocent race of men and is productive of ruin and desolation of a country which the efforts of the well-directed industry of Great Britain might contribute to civilise.On Commerce and the Enlightenment it said:[the slave trade]…is directly repugnant to the primary laws of nature…and that its continuance, in this enlightened age, is disgraceful to the nation and utterly inconsistant (sic) with the profession of Christians.

Death

When Dale died at home, 43 Charlotte Street in Cambuslang, Glasgow on 7 March 1806, huge crowds of mourners lined the streets of Glasgow. He was buried in the Ramshorn Cemetery in central Glasgow in a plot he had purchased some years before. The grave lies on the outer east wall towards the north-east corner.
The Glasgow Herald’s obituary of him acknowledged his achievements as a businessman, and noted that: …his ear was never shut to the cry of distress; his private charities were boundless; and every public institution which had for its object the alleviation or prevention of human misery, in this world or in the world to come, received from him the most liberal support and encouragement.

References

Bibliography
Modern publications on Dale:
 McLaren, D. J. (2015).  David Dale: A Life.  Stenlake Publishing Ltd.

Modern publications on Owen:
 Claeys, G. (ed)(1993) The Selected Works of Robert Owen. Pickering & Chato.
 Davis, R. & O’Hagan, F. (2014) Robert Owen. Bloomsbury.
 Donnachie, I. & Hewitt, G. (2015) Historic New Lanark. 2nd edition. E.U.P.
 Donnachie, I. (2005). Robert Owen, Social Visionary. 2nd edition. Birlinn.

Historical publications:
 Baines, E. (1835) History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain. London: Fisher.
 Black, W.G. (1912) ‘David Dale’s House in Charlotte Street’, Transactions of the Regality Club (1889-1912), 4 vols. Vol 4 (1912):93-121. Glasgow: James Maclehose & Sons.
 Liddell, A. (1854)  Memoir of David Dale. Blackie.
 Owen, R. (1857).  Life of Robert Owen by Himself .Effingham Wilson.
 Podmore, F. (1906) Robert Owen – A Biography. Hutchinson & Co.

External links
 http://www.electricscotland.com/history/other/dale_david.htm
 http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/usbiography/d/daviddale.html
 http://www.rampantscotland.com/famous/blfamdale.htm

Scottish philanthropists
Scottish business theorists
People from East Ayrshire
1739 births
1806 deaths
Cambuslang
Scottish merchants
18th-century Scottish businesspeople
Scottish socialists
Utopian socialists
Scottish Congregationalists
Cooperative organizers
Founders of utopian communities
18th-century philanthropists